Playing in the Rye by Jerry

Playing in the Rye by Jerry - April 2014 Scholarship Essay

I have read my fair share of literature but I would say the character that has influenced me the most would have to be Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. It is not that he influenced me to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and use curses as if they were everyday words, but he made me think of life differently and of growing up. Holden has had hard times and added with the stress of growing up, life is hard for him. Anyone can relate to this situation because we all grow up and it is something we have to face.

For anyone who has not read The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is your average 16-year-old boy. He is 6 feet tall, has partially grey hair, and likes to smoke more than necessary. He is actually not your normal boy, but his troubles may stem from the death of his beloved little brother at a young age. Tormented by the thought of his brother in the grave, Holden is tormented by the thought of death itself. Holden’s little brother, Allie, was very close to him, and was the golden child of the family. He was the smartest and nicest and Holden saw him as the most perfect child he had ever come across. Unfortunately, Allie died of leukemia when he was 11, and Holden was 13. In a fit of emotion, Holden broke the windows of the family car and broke his hand doing so. He was unable to attend Allie’s funeral due to being in the hospital and it is assumed that this is the time he starts having troubles.

Holden hates the adult world and wishes to stay out of it but he is coming to an age where that will soon be impossible to do. He has already indulged himself in a few adult affairs such as smoking, drinking, and the desire for sex. As much as he hates it he has to grow up to do those things and to be independent but he’s not willing to quite give up what innocence he has left. After getting kicked out of high school after high school, Holden is kicked out of Pencey Prep and decides that before going home for Christmas break, he will have a break of his own. During this break he goes to a couple of bars, flirts with a fellow student’s mother, almost has sex with a prostitute, and gets into a fight with a “pimp” who didn’t get all the money he wanted. Needless to say, Holden has dipped into the adult world but is not quite enjoying every ordeal of it.

Holden’s view on growing up really holds a place in my mind. Now I can relate growing up to playing in a field with a cliff at the edge, a cliff that has adulthood at the end with the fall down being the teenage years. Lately I have been wondering when I am going to fall off that cliff or if there’s any way for me to stay in the field. I have also been wondering if I have gone over the edge, but I am simply holding on to the cliff, trying to keep myself from falling into adult hood. I think after reading this book I have really embraced the childish side of myself and desired to hold onto it. But I am also ready to go into the next stage of my life. I enjoy watching Saturday morning cartoons and playing video games until bedtime but I also want to go to concerts and travel the world. I am enticed by these things that you have to grow up to partake in but I feel that I will lose myself once I become an adult.

While Holden was at Pencey, he did not like too many of his fellow classmates and described them, along with most other people he came across, as “phonies”. He felt as though most people were fake or simply did nice things to get something in return, and I would like to think that most people are not like that, but I will agree with Holden that there are a lot of phonies in the world. You never really a person’s motives for doing something, whether it be out of sheer kindness or for their own purposes, but with many people always desiring more or always thinking about themselves, it is very likely that people are not generally nice, they simply act nice. People like this may not be trying to gain something but might be trying not to hurt you by acting nice. People go through life as if it were a movie and the media and everything they are exposed to is giving them line after line. It took a character like Holden to make me realize that.